The Patriots

by Sana Krasikov

  Florence dropped into the armchair and pried off her boots, delaying the moment when she’d have to relate to him the events of the morning.

  “I think I’ll pack both,” Leon said with visible satisfaction. He was embarking on the first epic assignment of his propagandist’s career—a project that, he’d explained to Florence, was “not just another banalizing caricature” of the happy lot of Russia’s workers. He was once more returning to the East, this time not as a penniless homeless Jew, but as a reporter for the state’s official news agency, TASS, on assignment to chronicle the transformation of the national minorities—the Uzbeks, the Kazaks, the Tajiks—from backward illiterates hiding their women under yashmak veils into tractor drivers! Machine operators! Sports fans and amateur thespians! Through his reports, the Western press would bite its knuckles to read of the irrigation schemes that Soviet power was imposing on the arid land, now ripe for growing cotton. Looking at his neatly packed hardboard suitcase and aluminum flask, Florence felt a pinchlike sensation of envy. “You should bring some iodine,” she said, getting up and reaching for the top shelf of the commode where she kept the medicines. The loss of her passport still weighed on her chest. Now, still turned away from him, she said, “Something very strange happened to me this morning at OVIR.”

  She heard the hiss of the iron stop abruptly. She continued without facing him.

  “They had my new residence permit. But they didn’t seem to have my passport, which I gave the clerk last week. She gave me this….”

  Leon came close and stood blinking at the slip in Florence’s hand. “My question is,” he said at last, “who is Florentz Feyn? I’m not sure I know that fellow.”

  “Leon, you don’t think this whole thing is a little odd?”

  “You know what’s odd? That everyone’s telling me to bring cigarettes as palm grease when Uzbekistan is drowning in tobacco.” He went back to the table and began to test, one by one, the various tiny cutting, filing, and tweezing implements in his folding knife.

  “I’m certain it’s a mistake. I’m going back there tomorrow to get some answers.”

  “Don’t fight against the procedure, Florence; you’ll just get a chipped tooth. Look”—he unfolded and examined a miniature pliers—“it’s got all your information on it, doesn’t it?”

  “I’m going back, and I’m going to stay there until I talk to whoever’s in charge.”

  At this remark, the canny animation seemed to drain from Leon’s face. “Florence, don’t do that. It’s not the time for that right now. Look, look….” He rummaged through the pile of documents on the bed until he found his leather passport case, then dug into one of the pockets and produced a square of paper very much like the one she’d shown him.

  Speechlessly, she took it by the corner as though it were a razor blade. It contained Leon’s name, his passport number, place and date of birth, date of issue—in short, the sum of scattered particles that formed his American identity, reassembled and typed out in Cyrillic.

  “They gave this to me when I went to renew my visa four months ago. Told me it was too close to the expiration date. That’s why they issued me this temporary one here.”

  “You mean to say you’ve been walking around with this nothing piece of paper for four months?”

  It crossed Florence’s mind that her impulse to browbeat Leon might be only a natural reaction to the secret worry she’d nursed all day that he would be the one reproaching her. This awareness, however, did nothing to diminish her passion for a fight. “You didn’t think I’d be curious to know about this before I went to OVIR?”

  “I didn’t know you were heading there that day!”

  “Well, it’s a little strange that neither one of us has our original passport now.”

  “All right, it’s odd. There’s probably some new nachal’nik in charge up there who’s taken a dislike to the color brown. It’s not like America has forgotten we exist.”

  Florence let herself drop into the armchair and bit her thumbnail. She couldn’t be sure if she was more upset about the passports or about the fact that Leon was leaving her all alone.

  “How long will you be gone?” she said.

  “Only four weeks. And when I come back—oh, baby—I’ll bring you some of that turquoise jewelry their harem girls wear in their hair and bellybuttons, ooh-la-la.”

  “They don’t have harem girls, Leon. You’re thinking of Turkey.”

  “Maybe, but I’ll tell you what they do have—hashish.”

  “How will I reach you?”

  “Telephones happen to be something the Uzbeks are a little short on, but I’ll try to find one where I’m staying.”

  “Leon, maybe I should stop by the American embassy. Sort this out.”

  He took a step toward her and knelt down. With the side of his hand he brushed aside a curl on her forehead and smoothed it behind her ear. “We’ll take care of it when I get back, okay? We’ll do it together. The important thing is not to be in such a hurry all the time.” He cupped her head to kiss it the way he might have once kissed, Florence thought, the head of his deranged, tormented mother.

  —

  SHE MIGHT HAVE HEEDED Leon’s advice were it not for the letter.

  Letters from home came less frequently now—two or three times a year—which Florence interpreted as her parents’ concession to her choices and not to the failures of the Soviet mail system. This letter, though, included an insert from her brother, who (her mother’s portion of the letter informed Florence) was graduating early from Erasmus. In a grousing tone that was nonetheless boastful, Zelda had written, “Sidney is under the impression that he is destined for Yale, but will more likely be attending City College next fall.”

  Scanning Sid’s berserk penmanship, Florence saw that he was not, as she’d once been, under the misty spell of the Ivy League; more practically, he wished to study architecture or civil engineering and become, like his hero Robert Moses (a Yale alum), a “master builder.” Two whole paragraphs of scratchy text were devoted to this Robert Moses who was transforming the city of New York from a cluster of disconnected boroughs into a mega-megalopolis spanned by bridges and expressways. Two pictures were tucked into the looseleaf: a four-by-two of Sidney’s yearbook photo, his chin propped up self-consciously while he gazed seriously into the distance in a way he no doubt imagined befitted a future “master builder” (his ears nonetheless looking like the open doors of a taxicab careening straight at you), and a photograph of the family in the dining room—Zelda grimacing distrustfully into the camera, Sidney grinning with his eyes closed, Harry and his wife and their baby, now a chubby-kneed four-year-old girl on Solomon’s lap. At the end of the letter, her father had added a careful postscript inquiring if Florence would be able to travel to New York to attend Sidney’s graduation in June, his circumspect request already anticipating her answer.

  Sidney, in spite of his skinny neck and big ears, no longer looked like the kid she remembered. Could two and a half years really have passed this quickly? She missed all of them badly. But more than that she was surprised to feel in herself a belated affection for the family home itself. She was overcome with an almost physical love for the tasseled lampshades in the second photo, the living room’s ornamental bric-a-brac, its silver tea tray on the table, the bookshelf in the corner (filled, she knew, with unread Book-of-the-Month selections), her mother’s fussy curtains, and all the other unseemly, cozy, bourgeois accessories of which her and Leon’s communal-apartment life was supposed to be a principled and conscientious denial.

  That night, and several nights following, she went to bed clawed by a restless yearning for some guidance and direction. It was not until the following week that, waking up one morning to the sober light of a white-clouded November, Florence understood that the tangle of her feelings could be distilled into a practical question of housing. Her outlook would improve once she got out of the crush of communal life. Brightly, she remembered that she had once been in line to
get her own room from the bank. Now she had a spontaneous urge to ask Timofeyev whether a common-law marriage like hers and Leon’s made her ineligible for her own room in a different apartment. With two different rooms to their names, she and Leon would be in a strong position to trade on the gray market for a separate apartment of their own. Surely her mentor would be able to advise her in confidence about which channels to appeal to.

  Florence knocked on Timofeyev’s door that morning with a renewed sense of courage. She lowered her eyes respectfully when he invited her to sit. “What’s the urgent matter?”

  Many days had been a brave buildup to this moment, and now she felt tongue-tied.

  Florence seemed unable to catch Timofeyev’s eye, so she fixated on his collar. She was struck by the way his neck flesh sagged. Once a portly gentleman, he looked now like somebody recovering from a wasting illness. She thought perhaps it was the stress of all the new meetings they had to attend these days, clarifying and reclarifying the implications of the recent trials in which well-regarded Party members had confessed to monstrous crimes against the country.

  “Come out with it. I don’t have all day, Flora.”

  “You see, it’s my housing situation.”

  “Ah. The apartment question.”

  “My husband and I, we weren’t officially registered, and I believe my domestic situation is, how can I say it plainly, unworkable.”

  “And you’d like to apply through the bank for a room of your own, is that it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “I’m sorry, but I can’t do anything for you, Flora.”

  “I’m prepared for a long wait.”

  And now, letting the air out of his lungs, Timofeyev said, “I can’t help you because we’re cutting your position.”

  For a moment it seemed to Florence that she’d forgotten some elementary but critical rule of Russian grammar and couldn’t decipher the words coming at her.

  “You were going to be informed this week,” Timofeyev said.

  “I suppose I ought to finish typing up the correspondence from last week and organize…”

  “Flora Solomonovna, your responsibilities have been concluded here.”

  She could feel herself smiling and blinking at this, blinking and smiling, as if her mind, shocked into paralysis, still needed time to unscramble the signal for her body. Then, slowly, comprehension began to set in. “Grigory Grigorievich, you know I’ve been tirelessly committed to…”

  “You’ll be issued an official letter so you can apply for work elsewhere.”

  “Where will I apply?”

  He took a moment and, with his face only slightly softened, said, “You have valuable skills. The timing is just poor.”

  She saw in his face a reflection of her confusion, watched his mustached lips part in preparation, she felt, to give her some clarification. But he seemed at that moment to hesitate, and then, looking her square in the eye, he added, somewhat mysteriously, “It’s better this way, Flora, believe me. Who knows what will happen tomorrow.”

  Under Florence’s feet, the parquet rolled like the keel of an unsteady boat as she made her way to her desk and then, gathering her things, left to go home.

  And this feeling of vertigo continued all the way into evening as she waited for a telephone call from Leon. But Leon did not telephone that night, or the next. And Florence had no way to reach him in Tashkent or wherever he might be now. In the meantime, her days vacant and idle, she made futile telephone calls of her own. First she called Essie, who was now employed as a copy editor in the Foreign Languages Publishing House, who promised Florence she would ask about any openings in the English-language division. She called back with a reply faster than Florence thought polite or necessary.

  “They aren’t taking anybody.”

  “You said they were short-staffed.”

  “They don’t want to hire foreigners.”

  “It’s the Foreign Languages Publishing House, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Maybe in the spring.”

  It was clear to Florence that Essie wouldn’t ask again; she was too scared for her own position. Florence made other inquiries, but it was hopeless. The problem was unsolvable. Everybody had to be registered at some place of employment, yet one couldn’t get a decent job unless somebody would vouch for you. The newly passed Constitution guaranteed the right to work. In reality this meant that it was against the law not to work.

  Night after night, she lay awake in a torpor of self-reproach. What had she done to get fired? Why had she not held on more dearly to her passport? When would Leon call? It was the curse of communal apartments that the muffled noises out in the hall were at once too loud and unsettlingly inaudible. Too noisy for her to sleep, too indistinct for her to know what slanders her neighbors were spreading about her. As the days wore on her mental state now vacillated between panic and dread. She had never been a regular smoker, but now, after buying her milk and bread in the morning, she also stopped by the tobacco kiosk. With the window open to the sharp, moist air of early December, she stood trembling in the cold as she chain-smoked Kazbek cigarettes until the nicotine dulled her anxiety and made her tingle with its inviolable aura. She smoked until the world in the window became dove-gray, then fully dark, so that finally the only light in the room was the throbbing ruby of her cigarette ember. If she could only hear Leon’s voice! He would know just what to say to calm her and mollify whatever demons were pursuing her.

  Instead, she crawled into bed with Sidney’s photograph as if it were a talisman. She had always been prone to the clarity that extreme loneliness can bring. The alluring beginnings of a new plan now began to take shape in her mind. It wasn’t the first time she’d thought about the plan, only the first time she had fully allowed herself to let it take on such a vivid form. Before, her days had been too full of distractions—with work and meetings, and Leon always trying to amuse her and make her feel better about everything. Now, at last, she could think. Again and again the same image came to her: a boat cutting through the waters off the coast of Finland, while out on the deck, standing firm in the spray of cold Baltic waters, she stared resolutely westward. Was there really any shame in going home? Yet now another thought tormented her: Would she be standing alone, or would Leon be by her side?

  Cigarettes and brandy-spiked tea carried her through the next four days, until Leon, at last, phoned the apartment.

  She darted to the big hallway telephone without having to be called (for two weeks her ears had been alert to every ring). But when Leon’s voice came percussively on the line and asked for Flora in Room 6, she spoke indifferently.

  “I’d started to lose hope I’d ever hear from you.”

  “Sorry, darling. I told you it’d be difficult. Can’t talk long. I’m making this call on the credit and the good graces of Intourist.”

  “Is that where you’ve been staying?”

  “No, they’ve been taking me around the new farms. Last night, I stayed with the chairman of the kolkhoz. The accommodations have been surprisingly pleasant.”

  “Eastern hospitality.”

  “Whoever said the Mussulmen are opposed to the drink has never been here. They’ll stop at nothing, Florie, to wrangle you into a contest, which I might have a chance at not losing if their refreshments were limited to humble vodka, but do you know what they drink here?”

  She let the expensive silence of three time zones go unchecked by her voice.

  “I’ll tell you,” he said, answering his own question. “Fermented camel’s milk. I’ve become quite fond of it. It gives your mouth a strange little kick, almost like champagne.”

  “When are you coming home?” she said matter-of-factly.

  “Scheduled to leave next Monday. The train is three days. Is everything all right?”

  She paused, fingering the scraps of paper and store receipts tucked behind the telephone’s broad back. “No, it isn’t,” she said finally. “I lost my job.” And when there was silence
on his end, she went on: “I can guess who was behind it. The new office manager, Orlova. Timofeyev didn’t have the guts to stand up to her….”

  “Just like that, with no warning?”

  She thought back to a few weeks earlier, when Timofeyev had suggested she take a vacation. He had told her she looked “worn down.” But to Leon she said: “And the worst part of it is that no one wants to hire a…‘foreigner.’ No one will go over their head to put in a good word for me. Even Essie is of no use—never mind everything you’ve done for her, getting her that job in the first place.”

  “Listen, Florie, why don’t we just talk about this when I get home.”

  “Everyone’s got an Orlova in their office who’ll ask, ‘Why did you hire some foreigner?’ So that’s that, Leon. I’m going to the embassy….”

  “I can’t talk about this now, Florie….”

  “I’m still an American citizen, after all.”

  “All right, take it easy. You don’t sound well.”

  “I can’t get to sleep, Leon. I miss my family….” Her final word came out as something between a squeak and a sob. She had been prepared to present her case to him succinctly and decisively, but now she was whimpering and letting mucus run down her nose like a child.

  “Shhh…shhh…Just…be quiet, will you? I told you we’ll sort it all out when I’m back.”

  “I can’t wait that long.”

  “Florence, please, just…don’t do anything or go anywhere. Eight days, sweetheart, that’s all I’m asking. Can you do that for me? I’ll try to get an earlier train. There’s money in a tin box in my shearling on the top shelf.”